internet quit working

[jmlee]

Well, my uncle called me today wanting me to fix his computer. I picked it up and brought it over and when I turned it on after loading windows a "live virus protection" screen popped up and filled the whole screen with no way to exit out of it. It looked like it was scanning and finding viruses although i know it wasnt really scanning. Anyways, i ctrl alt deleted it and it said taskmanager was infected. i did it again and alt-e to end it, and i ended it that way before the taskmanager closed again. so then i updated avast! and ran it and it got rid of 3 viruses. after that, i took it back thinking it was fine, and the internet wouldnt work. so i pinged yahoo.com in the command prompt and received replies that were fine. also, the avast updated again. but internet explorer thinks its offline. and it also tries to open search.imesh.com in the address bar. and it keeps changing the home page back to search.imesh.com when i switch it. i changed the index file's name in safe mode from the administrator account, and it didnt help. i also did the same thing with the hosts file, and it didnt help. i cleared the temporary internet files with internet explorer. i downloaded google chrome and installed it and it does the same thing, but gives a connection denied error every time instead of cannot display page. i ran avast! again and it finds nothing. what could be doing this?

 

[MindoverMaster]

Set Avast to do a virus check on start-up

Man, its been years since I used that, yet I still know that, geez...

 

[Lexluethar]

Run malwarebytes in safemode. After that restore all of internet explorers settings to default and remove any add on programs with IE.

If that doesn't work AND you are sure the computer is fixed, just IE is hosed then reinstall IE.

 

[jmlee]

well, neither of those worked. malwarebytes got rid of 19 problems (all in backup files). i downloaded firefox, and for some reason, it works! i scanned it again with both and neither find anything, so i assume its just explorer screwed up somehow as a result of a virus it used to have. i also assume chrome must use explorer files in order for it to work, and firefox does not. thanks for the advice, and now you know to try firefox if anyone else has similar issues!

 

[MindoverMaster]

As Lex said, reinstall IE, or just take it off.